'A brief rummage is acceptable' – how to share Christmas chocolates
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Loading... - Nuria Ramos
- 22 Dec 2020
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Unwrap, be ready
Remove any cellophane or seals prior to guests arriving. It suggests generosity. Any painfully slow, fiddly unwrapping of a box, as if guests are being grudgingly indulged (“We never really eat chocolate, you see”), will put the recipients on edge. A good host’s demeanour says: “Dig in!” A wrapped box sourly infers: “Eat sparingly, we like to eke these out into January.”
Similarly, do not attempt to palm visitors off with After Eights and Matchmakers before 3 January. Everyone knows that such dregs are only eaten, sullenly, in the first week back at work after Christmas. When the good stuff has gone. They are the vapour trails of festive fun. The dreary leftovers of Christmas feasting. Get your Lindt balls out. Stop being petty.
No pre-booking
“Just don’t eat all the caramel barrels! Ha ha ha. Only joking … or am I?” As a host, once you offer round a box of chocolates, they are no longer yours, morally. You cannot passive-aggressively warn people off your favourites.
“Take a few”
Someone, be it the host, has to openly outline how many chocolates each person can choose with each pass (note: a few means three, not five). In close family situations it is acceptable to openly negotiate the amount (“Is this a double dip? Four each? Freestyle?”), but the key point is that there must be mutually acknowledged agreement. Otherwise, people will blithely help themselves to any number between one and five, leading to the kind of simmering resentment that can ruin Christmas – or, certainly, a Christmas three years hence, when it all comes out after too much prosecco.
Circulation problems
It is implicitly understood by all civilised people that, once offered, a box of chocolates must circulate at least twice in the next 30 minutes. As a host, you cannot unleash this surge in serotonin in your guests, then shut it down after one round. That is worse than no chocolate at all.
No hoarding
Do not hog all the good ones on the first round. If choosing three chocolates, they should be three different chocolates (your favourite, plus two supplementary choices). Likewise, do not attempt go to the second layer if there are chocolates left on top. Ayn Rand-idolising neoliberals may admire such selfish behaviour as actualising Thatcher’s “no society” credo, but we progressive Guardian readers should be willing to share the burden of finishing those sickly dark chocolate strawberry ones. It is grassroots socialism in action.
Don’t be the bottleneck
To maintain the festive mood, those chocolates need to circulate at a fair clip. Do not prevaricate endlessly over your choice, reading the flavour guide as if it is a legally-binding contract. You are choosing a chocolate, not a new car. This is not a life-changing decision. Don’t like it? Relax, in two minutes, you will be able to choose another.
Pick, don’t root
If you are choosing from a tall box, take one from the first few layers. A brief rummage is acceptable but you cannot painstakingly empty out the whole box in front of you, as if cataloguing finds from a rare archaeological dig. It betrays a self-interest that will make everyone want to kill you. Merry Christmas!
Bin your rubbish
Putting empty wrappers back in the box is up there with failing to pick up your dog’s poo, or sneaking empties into your neighbours’ bottle bin. It tears up our shared social contract. It is anarchy.
Suck it up
It is wholly unacceptable, whilst still choosing your chocolates, to taste the first one you have picked, decide you don’t like it, and decide to swap it – much less re-wrap it and put it back in the box. Equally, loudly complaining you have chosen the wrong chocolate, or that someone got to your favourite first, will harsh everyone else’s cocoa mellow. Discreet swapping and trading may ensue after each round, but this has to be entirely voluntary. No one wants to hear a 38-year-old bullying his brother-in-law to give him a penny toffee.
Accommodate the afflicted
There is always one. One oddball who only likes something maverick, like coffee creams. It may be tempting, for lols, to swoop on that flavour first. But tears and physical violence have ensued over this; and not just among seven year olds. Do not – to use a little contemporary rhyming slang – be a Jeremy Hunt about it. It is Christmas after all.
